Aseem Shirvasta

Predatory Growth in India: Critique and Alternative

Room 1028, Dana Building, 3:00-4:00pm

The Uttarakhand floods during the summer of 2013 were a grim portent of the predatory implications of India’s growth. They were the worst in recent decades. While it may be an exaggeration to call them ‘man-made’, their intensity was surely greater on account of man-made factors like anthropogenic climate change and unruly economic growth.

In the light of the Uttarahand disaster this talk will examine the socio-economic and ecological impact of globalization in India after its first two decades. It will consider the way the reforms were introduced, what they consisted of, and what results they have precipitated.

Aseem Shrivastava is a Delhi-based writer and ecological economist. He wrote his doctoral thesis in Environmental Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has taught economics for many years at college and university level in India and the US. Most recently, he taught philosophy at Nordic College, Norway. He has written extensively on issues associated with globalization. He is the author (with Ashish Kothari) of Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India (Penguin India, 2012).